Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

by Yuval Noah Harari

The real breakthrough in monetary history occurred when people gained trust in money that lacked inherent value,

silver shekel had no inherent value. You cannot eat, drink or clothe yourself in silver, and it’s too soft for making useful tools –

The appearance of a single transnational and transcultural monetary zone laid the foundation for the unification of Afro-Asia, and eventually of the entire globe, into a single economic and political sphere.

but all believed in gold and silver and in gold and silver coins.

thereby moving the wheels of economic growth in both Europe and East

Mediterranean, gold was a coveted status symbol, hence its value was high. What would happen next?

Even if Indians still had no real use for gold, the fact that Mediterranean people wanted it would be enough to make the Indians value

For thousands of years, philosophers, thinkers and prophets have besmirched money and called it the root of all evil. Be that as it may, money is also the apogee of human tolerance. Money is more open-minded than language, state laws, cultural codes, religious beliefs and social habits.

bridge almost any cultural gap, and that does not discriminate on the basis of religion, gender, race, age or sexual orientation. Thanks to money, even people who don’t know each other and don’t trust each other can nevertheless cooperate effectively.

can turn land into loyalty,

Universal trust:

Human communities and families have always been based on belief in ‘priceless’ things, such as honour, loyalty, morality and love.

As money brings down the dams of community, religion and state, the world is in danger of becoming one big and rather heartless marketplace.

economy. It is therefore impossible to understand the unification of humankind as a purely economic process.

First, to qualify for that designation you have to rule over a significant number of distinct peoples,

flexible borders and a potentially unlimited appetite.

It’s thanks to these two characteristics that empires have managed to unite diverse ethnic groups and ecological zones under a single political umbrella, thereby fusing together larger and larger segments of the human species and of planet Earth. It should

Empires were one of the main reasons for the drastic

reduction in human diversity.

Most empires have found it alarmingly easy to put down rebellions. In general, they have been toppled only by external invasion or by a split within the ruling elite.

Calgacus called the Romans ‘the ruffians of the world’, and said that ‘to plunder, slaughter and robbery they give the lying name of empire; they make a desert and call it peace’.

Imperial elites used the profits of conquest to finance not only armies and forts but also philosophy, art, justice and charity.

Habsburg Empire’s profits from its rule over its Slavic, Hungarian and Romanian-speaking provinces paid Haydn’s salaries and Mozart’s commissions.

Today most of us speak, think and dream in imperial languages that were forced upon our ancestors by the sword.

Cyrus’ innovative efforts to gain the approbation of a nation living under the thumb of his empire

The presumption to rule the entire world for the benefit of all its inhabitants was startling.

made Homo sapiens, like other social mammals, a xenophobic creature. Sapiens instinctively divide humanity into two parts, ‘we’ and ‘they’. We are people like you and me, who share our language, religion and customs. We are all responsible for each other, but not responsible for them. We were always distinct from them, and owe them nothing. We don’t want to see any of them in our territory, and we don’t care an iota what happens in their territory. They are barely even human.

In contrast with this ethnic exclusiveness, imperial ideology from Cyrus onward has tended to be inclusive and all-encompassing. Even though it has often emphasised racial and cultural

Empires have played a decisive part in amalgamating many small cultures into fewer big cultures.

Ideas, people, goods and technology spread more easily within the borders of an empire than in a politically fragmented region.

One reason was to make life easier for themselves. It is difficult to rule an empire in which every little district has its own set of laws,

Standardisation was a boon to emperors. A second and equally important reason why empires actively spread a common culture was to gain legitimacy.

order to exploit the world, but in order to educate humanity.

The wild Germans and painted Gauls had lived in squalor and ignorance until the Romans tamed them with law, cleaned them up in public bathhouses, and improved them with philosophy.

One famous anecdote tells of an ambitious Indian who mastered the intricacies of the English language, took lessons in Western-style dance, and even became accustomed to eating with a knife and fork. Equipped with his new manners, he travelled to England, studied law at University College London, and became a qualified barrister.

They began to believe in human rights and the principle of self-determination, and they adopted Western ideologies such as liberalism, capitalism, Communism, feminism and nationalism.

Good Guys and Bad Guys in History

behind what they claim is a pure, authentic civilisation, untainted by sin. These ideologies are at best naïve; at worst they serve as disingenuous window-dressing for crude nationalism and bigotry. Perhaps you could make a case that some of the myriad cultures that emerged at the dawn of recorded history were pure, untouched by sin and unadulterated by other societies. But no culture since that dawn can reasonably make that claim, certainly no culture that exists now on earth. All human cultures are at least in part the legacy of empires and imperial civilisations, and no academic or political surgery can cut out the imperial legacies without killing the patient.

Whatever path we take, the first step is to acknowledge the complexity of the dilemma and to accept that simplistically dividing the past into good guys and bad guys leads nowhere. Unless, of course, we are willing to admit that we usually follow the lead of the bad guys.

century,

unification of humankind was an everyday fact.

Kublai Khan’s

Religions assert that our laws are not the result of human caprice, but are ordained by an absolute and indisputable authority. This

First, it must espouse a universal superhuman order that is true always and everywhere. Second, it must insist on spreading this belief to everyone. In other words, it must be universal and missionary.

religious effect of the Agricultural Revolution was to turn plants and animals from equal members of a spiritual round table into property.

gods gained importance because they offered a solution to this problem.

Animism did not entirely disappear at the advent of polytheism. Demons, fairies, ghosts, holy rocks, holy springs and holy trees remained an integral part of almost all polytheist religions.

Polytheists, on the other hand, increasingly saw the world as a reflection of the relationship between gods and humans.

omnipotent and all-encompassing power

Fate (Moira, Ananke).